Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

Curiosity sees smooth ground for the first time in years

11:01 am

June 12, 2026 Curiosity panorama
Click for full resolution version. Click here, here, and here for original images.

Overview mapd
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above was created from three pictures taken on June 12, 2026 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity (see here, here, and here). It shows the immediate ground uphill in front of the rover, which appears to be the smoothest ground that Curiosity has seen in about five years, since it entered the foothills at the base of Mount Sharp in 2021.

Since then the terrain has been routinely boulder strewn. In one case, the ground was so rocky and rough that the science team had to back off from their original plans and find a different route.

The panorama above shows something wholly different, a patch of relatively smooth ground with only a scattering of sharp rocks protruding periodically from below. This ground is likely the rover’s first taste of what the science team calls the “yardang unit”, the light colored hills in the lower right of the overview map to the right. For years that team has looked at those hills, wondering what it would be like to drive Curiosity on them. Their geology suggests a much softer terrain, sand shaped into dunes (yardangs) by the wind. The unknown was always whether the ground was structurally strong enough for the rover to traverse it.

It looks like they are about to get their first clue. Based on the panorama above, the ground appears very promising.

On the overview map, the blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position, with the red-dotted line is planned route and white-dotted line its actual travels. The yellow lines indicate approximately the area covered by the panorama.

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SpaceX gets an additional $10 billion from its IPO, bringing total raised to $85.7 billion

9:05 am

SpaceX logo

SpaceX yesterday announced that it has raised an additional $10 billion from its initial public offering (IPO) because its original private investors have decided to exercise their option to purchase stock, bringing the total raised to $85.7 billion.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (“SpaceX”) today announced the closing of its initial public offering of an aggregate 638,888,888 shares of its Class A common stock, including the full exercise by the underwriters of their overallotment option to purchase an additional 83,333,333 shares of Class A common stock from SpaceX. The issuance of all shares closed on June 15, 2026, bringing the gross proceeds from the initial public offering to SpaceX to approximately $85.7 billion. The shares of Class A common stock began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and Nasdaq Texas on June 12, 2026, under the ticker symbol “SPCX.”

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, Barclays, Deutsche Bank Securities, RBC Capital Markets, UBS Investment Bank, and Wells Fargo Securities acted as book-running managers for the offering. Cantor, Needham & Company, Raymond James, Societe Generale, Stifel, William Blair, BTG Pactual, ING, Macquarie Capital (USA) Inc., Mirae Asset Securities, Mizuho, and Santander acted as co-managers.

The actual cash raised for the company is less than $85.7 billion, as the various financial institutions listed in the second paragraph above get a cut for managing the IPO, which is only 0.75%, the lowest percentage for an IPO since 2010. Thus, SpaceX raised more than $85 billion for its own use.

As I noted a few days ago, this nest egg of cash is only part of the company’s resources. It presently earns about $31 billion in revenue yearly from Starlink and its computer hardware divisions. That number is also certain to rise in the coming years.

Meanwhile, subsequent trading of the company’s stock on Wall Street remains brisk, with the price continuing to rise. It is presently trading at over $200 per share. Though this higher price doesn’t mean more money to SpaceX (as it only represents resales of the stock), it does tell us that the market considers the stock more valuable than its initial price. Thus, the predictions of many financial experts that the IPO was over-valued are so far turning out to be wrong.

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June 15, 2026 Quick space links

3:02 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

  • On June 14, 1967 Mariner 5 was launched to fly past Venus
    On October 19, 1967 it passed 2,585 above the surface, providing the first measurement of Venus’ 800 degree Fahrenheit atmosphere with pressures 100 times that of Earth. It also found no evidence of water, predicted incorrectly by some scientists and sci-fi authors as the main component of Venus’s cloudy atmosphere.
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Are the Russians no longer going to dock to its leaking Zvezda module on ISS?

10:15 am

Zvezda module of ISS
The Zvezda module, with aft PrK section indicated
where the cracks have been found.

In a report today at Ars Technica, Eric Berger cites two anonymous NASA officials as saying that the Russians have decided to decommission the aft PrK section of its Zvezda module where it has found numerous cracks and air leaks in the hull, apparently caused by the stress of the many dockings to Zvezda since it was launched almost thirty years ago.

Berger’s report was aimed at providing more information about the kerfuffle between NASA and Roscosmos on June 5, 2026,, when NASA had the astronauts on its half of the station shelter inside their Dragon capsule because Roscosmos was going to have its Russian astronauts cut off a structural bracket in Zvezda as part of the first phase of a new leak patch effort. NASA objected strongly to this action, fearing justifiably that the work could cause a catastrophic failure in Zvezda.

The Russians eventually backed off, merely doing measurements of the module’s new crack, which appearantly appeared after a Progress docking in April

Berger doesn’t really add any significant new details to this June 5 story, but he ends his report with this tidbit:

In the days since, there has been some additional back-and-forth, but Russia has now told NASA it will decommission the PrK module. Effectively, this means cosmonauts will no longer enter the PrK module or attempt to pressurize it. Progress vehicles will still be able to use the docking port to transfer fluids or perform other functions, but Russia will need to use other ports to move supplies on board the space station. [emphasis mine]

This quote however doesn’t tell us anything, and actually raises more questions. The Russians have already been keeping the hatch to Zvezda closed as much as possible, opening it only to unload Progress cargo. And if Progress freighters are still going to dock to Zvezda to “transfer fluids or perform other functions”, the module isn’t decommissioned. Nor is the risk reduced. One of the reasons Zvezda has been stressed over the years is that this port is along the station’s main axis, which makes it ideal for engine burns to raise the station’s orbit. Progresses have been doing this repeatedly from Zvezda for three decades. If they intend to dock with Zvezda to “transfer” fluids”, that also suggests they also plan to continue to use that port for those burns.

It also makes no sense to say other ports will be used to “move supplies” from freighters. Russia isn’t going to dock to Zvezda to transfer fluids, do engine burns, and then move Progress to a different port to transfer cargo.

Thus, we really at this moment do not know what the Russians intend. Nor do we know if they plan to continue to dock with Zvezda. And it appears that each time they do, the chances of a catastrophic failure of Zvezda increases.

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Two launches so far today, with a third only hours away

9:29 am

Since last night there were two launches globally, by China and SpaceX, with a third launch scheduled several hours hence by the rocket startup Isar Aerospace.

First, China’s launched eight classified “high-resolution optical remote sensing” satellites, its solid-fueled Kinetica-1 rocket (also called Lijian-1) lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. Such satellites are almost certainly for military reconnaissance. China’s state-run press provided no other information, nor did it mention where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China. Kinetica-1 is also built by the pseudo-company CAS-Space, which happens to be wholly owned by a government agency.

Next, SpaceX launched 24 more Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage completed its 14th flight (45 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

Finally, a third launch is scheduled for 1 pm (Pacific) by the rocket startup Isar Aerospace. It will be making its second attempt from Norway’s Andoya spaceport to launch its Spectrum rocket, the first having failed seconds after launch in March 2025. I have embedded the live stream below, and will post a separate report after the launch. UPDATE: Scrubbed due to ground issues.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race (prior to Isar’s launch attempt):

71 SpaceX
37 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 71 to 64.
» Read more

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India won’t reveal the cause of its two PSLV rocket failures

10:19 am

India's space agency ISRO, as transparent as mud
India’s space agency ISRO,
as transparent as mud

Though one of India’s high government officials yesterday announced that its space agency ISRO had “resolved” the third stage issue that caused two consecutive failures of its PSLV rocket, that official also refused to provide any details.

Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh on Saturday said that the anomaly in the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) has been resolved. Dr. Singh said on the sidelines of the Research, Industry, Start-up and Entrepreneurship (RISE) Conclave 2026 in Bengaluru, that the national level expert committee constituted to review the reason for anomaly in PSLV Vehicle has submitted its report and the anomaly has been detected.

“The report has come out and the anomaly has been detected. However we cannot share that (reason for the anomaly) on a public platform. But experts are working on it, which has been resolved and very soon we will be back on the track,” Dr. Singh said replying to a query by The Hindu.

Note that after the first third stage failure in 2025, ISRO was also reticent about revealing the problem and how it fixed it. Then the third stage failed again at almost the exact same moment during the next launch in January 2026.

A month later this same official announced ISRO knew what the problem was and had fixed it — once again giving no details — and said the next launch was scheduled for June 2026. It is now June, and despite Singh’s promise no PSLV launch is being prepared.

This lack of transparancy speaks very badly for ISRO. It will make it extremely difficult for it to attract any commercial customers. In fact, that is basically what has happened. Before the Covid panic ISRO had a decent share of the commercial satellite market. Now, even with that satellite market growing in leaps and bounds, it has almost no commercial customers.

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Only half of all social science can be replicated

4:00 pm

The uncertainty of science: In a new study, researchers attempted to replicate and thus confirm the results of several hundred social science papers, and found that the results of only half could be replicated.

Researchers from a variety of universities looked at “164 quantitative papers published from 2009 to 2018 in 54 journals in the social and behavioural sciences,” according to the summary in the Nature article. The team “attempted replications of 274 claims of positive results” but found only about half could be replicated. The researchers found that many published findings did not consistently hold up when tested again, although the exact replication rate varied depending on how success was measured.

This result jives with other reports over the years that found most science research difficult if not impossible to replicate or confirm.

In fact, every study in the past two decades that attempted to replicate earlier work has consistently found that about half the papers published in the scientific literature in the soft sciences (psychology, social sciences, biology, medicine, pharmaceuticals) could not be confirmed.

In other words, a very very large percentage of science research is junk and should be ignored. In fact, no study or research result should be given any credence until someone else has been able to duplicate the results independently. We should especially pay no attention to declarations by any government health officials, as such declarations are routinely completely divorced from any research at all.

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June 12, 2026 Quick space links

2:39 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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A galaxy as seen by Hubble and Webb

9:23 am

A galaxy seen by Hubble and Webb
Click for original image.

Cool image time. The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on March 20, 2026 in a coordinated observations by both the Hubble and Webb space telescopes.

This March 20, 2026, image of Messier 64, or the Black Eye Galaxy, is a composite view from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. It shows Messier 64 captured at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths by Webb, while Hubble’s image shows the galaxy in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light.

Messier 64 is characterized by its bizarre internal motion. The gas in the outer regions of this spiral galaxy is rotating in the opposite direction from the gas and stars in its inner regions. This strange behavior may be the result of a merger between M64 and a satellite galaxy over a billion years ago.

The red in this image is dust, as the galaxy gets its nickname from the dark streak that wraps around its nucleus on its left side. In optical that streak is dark. Here Webb’s infrared view sees it in false color red.

READERS: It appears that it is a very slow news day today. Other than SpaceX’s IPO, which is on-going and too soon to post any reports, I can so far find nothing much of great significance on which to report.

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Two launches today by Japan and SpaceX

8:47 am

The beat goes on! Even as SpaceX proceeds today with the largest initial public offering of stock ever, raising an expected $75 billion in cash for its long term plans, the global launch industry marched on with two launches today.

First, Japan’s space agency JAXA successfully launched its H3 rocket on a test flight following a launch failure in December 2025. The rocket lifted off from JAXA’s Tanegashima spaceport in southern Japan, using its simplest configuration, with no solid-fueled strap-on boosters. Though the rocket deployed some cubesats, its main payload was a dummy satellite to test the rocket’s deployment system, which caused the 2025 failure by not holding its satellite in place. On today’s launch, the deployment system worked as planned, which means JAXA can now resume operational launches with H3.

This was Japan’s first launch in 2026.

Next, SpaceX placed another 29 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The first stage completed its 27th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic (58 days after its previous flight).

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

70 SpaceX
36 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 70 to 63.

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June 11, 2026 Quick space links

2:38 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

12 comments

Parker makes 28th close fly-by of the Sun

12:48 pm

The overall flight plan for Parker
The overall flight plan for Parker. The green indicates
this most recent close approaches.

The Parker Solar Probe this past week successfully completed its 28th close fly-by of the Sun, zipping past its surface at a distance of only 3.8 million miles.

During this solar encounter, which started June 3 and ends Saturday, June 13, Parker’s four scientific instrument packages gathered data from inside the Sun’s atmosphere, or corona. Parker will begin returning detailed spacecraft telemetry on June 14, with science data transmission set to run from Wednesday, June 17 to Tuesday, June 30.

…Parker also equaled its record-setting speed of 430,000 mph — a mark that, like Parker’s distance to the Sun, was set during a close approach on Dec. 24, 2024, and matched during five flybys since, most recently on March 11. Parker will continue matching these speed and distance records during future flybys.

Engineers estimate the spacecraft’s heat shield experiences temperatures exceeding 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit with each close pass.

With each pass the spacecraft dives deep into the Sun’s corona and gathers data about it unobtainable from a distance. It is also gathering that data over time, as it first arrived in 2018, when the Sun was at its solar minimum with little sunspot activity. Since then it has ramped up to maximum and is presently thought to be on its way back down to minimum (though this still remains uncertain). Parker’s ability to gather data cross this timeline is invaluable for gaining a better understanding of the Sun’s behavior.

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Cosmologists: “We are STILL right! Dark energy does exist!”

12:14 pm

Modern science
The scientific method, according to some cosmologists

The uncertainty of science: In two somewhat self-righteous press releases today from two different academic organizations, scientists who have been for three decades touting the somewhat uncertain evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, thus requiring the ad hoc creation of something they label “dark energy” to explain it, insisted that their theory is still right despite publication of a paper last year that said their evidence was weak and unconvincing.

The headlines of the first press release is especially insulting to the very concept of the scientific method:

Both press releases have an arrogant attitude to those questioning the theory of dark energy, but the first is truly egregious. It is filled with bombastic claims, such as calling it “a crisis” for anyone to dare question the theory. It also uses a reliance on authority to justify its position (“The researchers … include two Nobel Laureates and represent institutions worldwide”). And finally, it demands that such questioning end, so “we can get back to trying to understand what this dark energy actually is, rather than wondering if it exists at all.”

The 2025 study that questioned the existence of dark energy — claiming the universe’s expansion rate was not accelerating — was actually part of a string of similar results. It did not occur in a vacuum, and actually stemmed from the overall uncertainty of the original supernova data.

Scientists in the 1990s had begun by assuming the brightness of a certain type of supernova is always the same, no matter when or where it happened. They then measured such supernovae in the early universe and found their brightness suggested the universe was expanding faster than predicted.

Since then, multiple studies have noted the weakness of that basic assumption. We don’t know enough about these supernovae, nor do we know enough about the environment in which they occur in the early universe.

The bottom line: The theory of dark energy might fit the facts as we have them now, but those facts remain uncertain and open to doubt. It is perfectly reasonable to question those facts, and to try to stifle that questioning violates the very fundamentals of the scientific method, which demands you question everything, that you search for truth wherever it may lead.

Sadly, this pattern of arrogance by cosmologists is not new. It has grated on my nerves since my first interview with a cosmologist in 1995, when she got insulted and huffy because I dared ask her some tough questions. This arrogance has gotten so bad that in 2022 24 scientists signed a petition protesting the censorship of their work for questioning the Big Bang theory.

Meanwhile, the data remains uncertain and actually contradictory. One set of data says the Hubble constant (the expansion rate) is one number, while another equally trustworthy data set says the constant is another number. And almost a decade of intense research has failed to resolve the conflict.

This new work might have proven the dark energy theory is still viable, but the press releases do little to convince anyone.

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Two orbital launches today by China and SpaceX, plus a suborbital hypersonic launch by Rocket Lab

10:45 am

The beat goes on! Since last night both China and SpaceX successfully completed orbital launches.

First, China used its most powerful operating rocket, the Long March 5, to place what its state-run press called “a new communication technology test satellite” into orbit, the rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport. As the Long March 5 can haul very large payloads into orbit, it suggests this one satellite is unusually heavy.

Next, SpaceX successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage (B1071) successfully completed its 34th flight (38 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. With this flight the stage moved past the space shuttle Atlantis, putting it in third place in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicle:

39 Discovery space shuttle
35 Falcon 9 booster B1067
34 Falcon 9 booster B1071
33 Atlantis space shuttle
32 Falcon 9 booster B1063
31 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1077
28 Falcon 9 booster B1078

Sources here and here.

Though it was not an orbital launch and thus isn’t added to my launch totals, Rocket Lab also launched last night, using its HASTE suborbital version of its Electron rocket to do a suborbital hypersonic test for the War Department, as part of its $190 million contract to do twenty such test flights. This appears to be the first of those launches.

UPDATE: The HASTE launch appears to have actually been an orbital one, with a second stage and kick stage, both of which reached orbit. No information has been released on the status of the classified payload, which I suspect was a test hypersonic missile that was accelerated to orbital speeds by that second stage and kick stage, but then flew a guided high speed planned suborbital test flight. Since this launch did place objects in orbit, and appears to have been 100% successful as planned I am including it in my launch totals below.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

69 SpaceX
36 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 69 to 62.

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Evidence of supernova remnant near the center of the Milky Way?

10:21 am

Supernova remnant near the Milky Way's center
Click for original image.

Using two X-ray space telescopes, astronomers now think they have detected evidence of a supernova remnant very close to the center of the Milky Way.

You can read their paper here [pdf]. The image to the right is a composite of optical (the stars), radio (the red nebula), and Chanda’s X-ray data (the blue nebula). From the press release:

The evidence for the new supernova remnant, located about 26,000 light-years from Earth, comes from X-ray data from Chandra and XMM-Newton. The X-ray data reveals a “blob” of X-ray emission [indicated by blue] that may come from the remains of a massive star that self-destructed as a supernova, buried within the larger cloud of expanding gas.

The location of this suspected supernova remnant in the image is [that blue region]. It is in bubble of gas [the surrounding larger and smaller red objects] that has had electrons stripped away from hydrogen — called an “H II region” — surrounding a massive, young star. If this is indeed a supernova remnant, then it is expanding at about two million miles per hour and is at least about 1,700 years old.

,..The long filaments seen in the radio image are caused by energetic particles travelling along magnetic fields that are mostly directed perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy.

According to the paper, this supernova remnant is found on the western edge of a vast energized gas cloud called the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), 1,600 to 1,900 light years across, that spans the Milky Way’s center. The features seen in the image above are part of a feature on the CMZ’s western edge called Sagittarius C, which apparently has not been studied as much as other parts of the CMZ.

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Another unsuccessful suborbital launch from proposed Nova Scotia spaceport

9:44 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

For the second time in less than seven months the Canadian startup company T-Minus unsuccessfully attempted a suborbital test launch from the proposed Spaceport Nova Scotia, owned and operated by the company Maritime Launch Services and funded mostly by a major $200 million lease by the Canadian government.

The launch was conducted from Spaceport Nova Scotia under approved regulatory and safety frameworks. The demonstration strengthened coordination among launch site teams and partners while refining launch operational procedures and the safety and security systems that govern all activities at the spaceport.

While two suborbital flights had been planned for today’s demonstration, the decision was made to conclude operations following the first flight in order to review mission data and incorporate lessons learned into future testing activities. The demonstration featured the launch of the Barracuda, a hypersonic, single-stage, solid-fuel suborbital vehicle capable of carrying payloads of up to 40 kilograms to altitudes of approximately 80 kilometres.

Full analysis of the flight data will continue over the coming weeks. However, initial data indicate that the vehicle operated nominally during the powered phase of flight before experiencing an anomaly late in the boost phase.

In other words, the first launch did not operate as expected, which forced the cancellation of the second launch. T-Minus had a similar result in its November 2025 test, making its record 2-for-2 in failures.

This launch was really designed as a PR event, not a space launch. Maritime invited numerous government officials and celebrities to watch, even as the leftist Carney government has tried to falsely sell its spaceport lease as a way to establish a sovereign launch capability for Canada.

Maritime itself has been trying to get this spaceport off the ground since 2016, with no success. Only in the last year it has come back to life due to that $200 million government lease. With that financing, Maritime has been able to sign up two different rocket startups to consider launching from Spaceport Nova Scotia, the German company Isar Aerospace and the South Korean company Innospace.

However, no orbital launches are presently scheduled, and it is likely none will occur before 2028. And when or if it happens, it will not be by a Canadian rocket company.

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Stoke Space successfully completes all tank tests for 1st stage of its Nova rocket

9:24 am

Stoke's Nova rocket
Stoke’s Nova rocket, designed to be
completely reusable.

The rocket startup Stoke Space announced earlier this week it has successfully completed all tank tests for 1st stage of its Nova rocket, thus increasing the odds that the rocket’s first launch will occur before the end of this year.

During this campaign, the team filled both tanks above their maximum expected pressure conditions, demonstrated automated pressure control across a range of fill levels, and operated the vehicle through challenging environmental conditions, including hurricane-force winds and a severe lightning storm. More than just a successful structural test campaign, the result was a broader demonstration that Nova’s hardware, software, ground systems, and operations approach are maturing together.

The company noted that it is not unusual for new rockets to experience explosions and other failures during this testing phase, thus making its complete success without a failure “a significant achievement.”

Stoke has consistently refused to set a launch date as it has been developing its rocket. It approach has been simply “We will launch when we are ready.” It has had this luxury in that it has successfully raised $1.34 billion in private investment capital, attracted to the company because of its rocket’s radical design that will allow both its first and second stages to be reusable. The first stage will land vertically, as does SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

The second stage uses a revolutionary nozzle design that makes its return possible. Instead of a single central nozzle, the engine has a ring of small nozzles on the outside edge of its heat shield. The stage will then return to Earth like a capsule, with those nozzles adding force to control and slow its descent.

The rocket itself has a smaller payload capacity than a Falcon 9, but its ability to be completely reusable means its second stage is far more capable. It can fly multiple times, thus lowering the launch costs for its customers. It can also provide an orbital manufacturing site, like a Varda capsule, which will attract a much larger customer base.

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Katalyst’s Link rescue spacecraft installed on Pegasus rocket

3:26 pm

Katalyst's proposed Swift rescue mission
Katalyst’s proposed Swift rescue mission.
Click for original image.

Katalyst’s Link rescue spacecraft that is going to try to raise the orbit of the Swift-Gehrels Space Telescope before it decays has now been installed on Northrop Grumman’s last Pegasus rocket, in preparation for a launch hopefully before the end of this month.

Engineers completed installation of Katalyst Space’s LINK robotic servicing spacecraft into a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket on Tuesday, June 9, at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Launch is anticipated later this month.

NASA contracted Katalyst to build and launch LINK to raise the altitude of the agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. Our planet’s atmosphere creates drag for spacecraft in low Earth orbit, gradually reducing their altitudes if they don’t have propulsion systems to counteract the effect. Recent solar activity magnified this effect on Swift, and its orbit decayed faster than anticipated.

This mission is one of the most daring ever financed by NASA and attempted by a private company. First, Gehrel-Swift has no attachment points. To grab it and then raise its orbit requires the robotic tentacles shown in the graphic to the right. Such a robotic grab in orbit has never been done before.

Second, Katalyst is a satellite servicing startup that has not yet serviced anything in orbit. The Link spacecraft was originally intended as a demo mission. When NASA put out a call for rescue proposals, the company decided to revise it to save Gehrels-Swift, because doing so was fast and made a rescue possible.

If Katalyst succeeds in this mission it will immediately leap to the top of the orbital servicing heap. Expect investment capital to quickly pour in afterward. And even if the mission fails but gets close, the company might still get a lot of investment capital, simply because it got so close.

Finally, this will be the final launch of the Pegasus rocket. After this flight Northrop Grumman has no more in stock, and it will retire it and its Stargazer L-1011 airplane that is used as its first stage.

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